In Between

This blog post is a reflection taken from my book Resolve. It’s a peek into the book and what prompted me to write it.  Reflect with me on how these moments in all of our lives should propel us to greater purpose. 

Chapter 1

As I sat in the room, time slowed. The woman who had brought me into the world was leaving it. Losing a loved one is hard, especially when it’s a parent. Someone who has been with you from your very first day, from your very first breath. On this, her last day, she lay next to me, despondent and fighting for every breath.

In these moments, reflection is so natural. I reflected on my life and on the lives of my parents, Marie and Karl. It had been twenty-five years since Dad passed away, and in a few days, I was turning fifty-seven, the age he was when he died. Twenty-five years had come and gone so quickly. I looked at Mom and realized she was twenty-five years older than me. I was in this mysterious middle space, simultaneously looking backward and forward twenty-five years.

It’s so easy to go through our days feeling like life will continue as it always has—until a moment like this, and suddenly you’re jolted with the stark realization that life is ultimately brief, brief and winding down to your last breath. I was hit hard with the conviction that if I was granted twenty-five more years, they would not be the same as the last. They would include old age and a dwindling of my energy, my strength, and perhaps my faculties. I was experiencing a crisis of sorts, a life crisis, to be sure. My own fifty-seventh birthday falling within the week Mom died added to my sense of urgency.

She took her last breath on a Sunday morning. My sisters, Karyl and Karyn, were with me, along with my nieces Shawna and Kat. This was the first time I had been physically present at a person’s passing. It was surreal. What was it was like for her to be free from her body and to immediately have her mind restored as she was carried into the presence of her Lord? I walked outside and wept. She was my mother, and I was her son. I knew I could have been a better son, could have expressed my love for her more, called her more, visited more. So many things I could have done better, more, differently. But she knew I loved her, and I knew she loved me. That has to be enough now. Mom was very independent and was so content with her life. I loved and, in some ways, envied that about her. She rarely complained and never expressed disappointment in me but was always proud of me. She lived a beautiful, uncomplicated life filled with joy and love for the people in it.

We had a simple graveside service along the perimeter of the cemetery. After the service, I stayed and watched a yellow Backhoe maneuver through the snow and lift the vault with her casket sealed inside. The still, frigid air was broken up by the soft purr of the motor and the crackling of the frozen ground beneath the tires as she was carried over and lowered into her final resting place beside Dad. I imagined the two of them, years earlier, dreaming about their lives and the promising road ahead: the family they would raise, the vacations, the accomplishments, the joy in seeing their children’s achievements. And now it all had come to this, a cold winter day, their lifeless bodies together laid to rest. It was over. Time had run its course. They had succumbed to the same destiny all of us face. Laid to rest under a bare, snow-covered maple tree, now living only through their children and grandchildren. Would they be remembered properly on this side of the grave?

Twelve years earlier, I had taken my son David to see his grandpa Karl’s grave. We were amazed when we approached it and saw the headstone. The cemetery was covered in a blanket of snow, yet his side of the headstone was completely dry. And there were no footprints in the snow indicating that someone had been there to clear it. Was this a sign? It was to us. A simple miracle and reminder that while life was moving along for the living, there was also a whole eternal realm that was anything but resting, a small signal that all was well on the other side of the grave. My father touched us that morning as we came to pay our respects and remember his life.

It was my mom’s death on December 10, 2017, that awoke me anew to the brevity of life. I felt it deep in my core. Mom had passed, and I was running out of time. The race was on!

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (1 Cor. 9:24–27)